Gasoline (16 page)

“What are you doing?”

He responds:

“What are you doing?

When she puts her hands on her hips and looks questioningly at him, he puts his hands on his hips and looks questioningly at her. She says to him:

“What are you up to?”

He answers:

“What are you up to?”

She says:

“Are you mimicking me?”

He says:

“Are you mimicking me?”

When she thumbs her nose at him, he thumbs his nose at her. When she slaps her cheek, he slaps his cheek. When she sticks out her tongue at him, he sticks out his tongue at her. When she raises her fist as if she’s about to take a swing at him, he raises his fist as if he’s about to take a swing at her. When Tiziana asks them what they’re doing, Hildegarda points at him and says:

“This nut is mimicking me, like a little kid.”

“This nut is mimicking me, like a little kid,” says Humbert, pointing at her.

In the early morning, when they leave the party, they give goodbye kisses and say the same parting phrases to every guest, successively. Out in the street, they both stick out their arms to flag a cab. When Hildegarda announces the name of the town they’re going to, Heribert repeats it.

When they get there, and Hildegarda gets out of the cab without paying, Humbert does the same. When Hildegarda goes back and pays the driver, Humbert pays him again. They open the door to the street twice (once each). They open two bottles of champagne, each filling the other’s glass. When Hildegarda laughs, Humbert laughs. When Hildegarda cries out in fury, Humbert cries out in fury. They get into bed. Hildegarda turns over on her left side and puts her arm under the pillow. Humbert turns over on his left side and puts his arm under the pillow. As soon as he hears her sleeping, he, too, falls asleep, but it’s a waking sleep. That is: he sleeps, entirely conscious that he’s sleeping, and this so unnerves him that he has a premonition: if on New Year’s Eve night he doesn’t manage to fall asleep right away (or if, once asleep, he wakes up again), not only will he never sleep peacefully again, but the year that is beginning will be the first in an interminable series of years (which will only end with his death) full of insomnia, night and day, and that, forevermore, even asleep he will dream that he is having insomnia, and this torment will reach such a point that he’ll never know if he really is an insomniac or if he is dreaming he is: if it is true that he gets into bed and isn’t able to sleep, or if it is all a figment of his imagination (and, if he is really awake, he will be consumed by doubt as to whether that night will turn into another terrible night of insomnia or if, in fact, it is no more than a passing waking state which will disappear a few minutes later when he sinks easily into the cocoon of sleep). Sometimes, the very disquiet of not knowing what will happen to him will keep him even wider awake. It will be useless for him to try to calm himself down, to think that he will soon be dreaming of blue canals, that he will be a boat without a rudder, carried off by shards of light half-erased by fog and dampness, by the lapping of the water against the wood of the dock, because he’ll never again know if the dock is the dream or the waking state. As a child he had understood that it was useless to count sheep, that it didn’t get you anywhere or help in the slightest, and that, instead of bringing on drowsiness, it ruins it beyond repair. Sometimes he will get up, go out to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, drink a glass of water (observing the slow advance of the cockroaches with horror), urinate, open the window, look out at the street
. . .
Sometimes, above all at the beginning, he’ll pick out a book at random, naively supposing that reading it will help him fall asleep, unaware that a change has taken place in him, far more sweeping than the passage from one year to the next, so that never again will he be able to read things as he had before, nor observe objects with the same casual familiarity as he had until now, and he will find himself having to learn all over again how to walk, to move, to bring the spoon up to his mouth, to talk, to look at each and every one of the objects that surround him, to understand so many things that until now had seemed perfectly comprehensible, and he will even lose interest in what he had, until now, believed to be the unassailable focus of his behavior. At times, he will sit down to relax on the sofa, and it will be there, on that very sofa, that he will awaken the following day, not having rested, so fatigued that he will not even have the wherewithal to lift his hand to pick up the pencil and hone it down to a fine point before sticking it into the throat of a dog, which is a robot, which is a flame, which is a bloated tiger (more like a cat), which is a horse rearing on its hind legs, which is a Hussar in battle, which is a hooker shaking off sleep, which is a sack falling to the ground, which is a gust of wind blowing over the entire planet, which is an orange falling from a tree and crushing a slew of bicycles, a tin clown, a man throwing himself off a skyscraper, a tunnel.

Quim Monzó was born in Barcelona in 1952. He has been awarded the National Award for fiction, the City of Barcelona Award for fiction, the Prudenci Bertrana Award for fiction, the El Temps Award for best novel, the Lletra d’Or Prize for the best book of the year, and the Catalan Writers’ Award; he has been awarded
Serra d’Or
magazine’s prestigious Critics’ Award four times. He has also translated numerous authors into Catalan, including Truman Capote, J. D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway.

Mary Ann Newman is the Director of the Catalan Center at New York University, which is an affiliate of the Institut Ramon Llull. She is a translator, editor, and occasional writer on Catalan culture. In addition to Quim Monzó, she has translated Xavier Rubert de Ventós, Joan Maragall, and Narcis Comadira, among others.

Open Letter—the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.

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